For the first time in a long time, I went to a local mall to buy groceries. As I wandered around, I felt I was back in America. I took a deep breath and forced a smile.
My stomach growled. The small, but sufficient, amount of foreign currency in my pocket felt good and simultaneously strange. No one was making me dinner after I had worked for them all day. Given, it was my day off, and I had been working pretty hard these past few weeks. But something was off… I missed the relationship of working for the people who were cooking my food. I was back in the impersonal world of, "I paid for this, now give it to me."
I did the exchange rates in my head as I shopped. I paid $15 for next week's groceries, $3 for a small meal in the mall, and paid a pang of guilt from knowing I had just spent two and a half weeks worth a meals in some of the places I've lived this year. After a prayer and two antacids, I shook it off. My eyes began to do what broke people do in malls: window shop.
I meandered around, looking at stores that I once frequented before the Race. Before my better judgment could tell me I wasn't ready yet, my feet led me into a Polo outlet. Turns out there was a sale. I watched as people dropped $100 and $250 on a single shirt and didn't even bat an eye. My heart started racing. There was so much clothes, so many choices.
I wanted to scream at them; talk about the "starving people" my mom would tell me when I was little. But I couldn't… I was too overwhelmed with emotion. So I did the most socially acceptable thing I could think of: Quietly freak out and run to the most familiar place I could see.
I sat in Starbucks, warring with myself that I could justify spending $2 on a muffin. I felt like an alien.
An Indian youth group came through wearing church t-shirts with a big cross on it. "Christian family. Familiarity." I said to myself and walked up to them without thinking. I asked them if they were Christians, told them I was a missionary, how long I had been on the road and that I was freaking out just a little bit. I asked them for prayer. They gave nervous smiles, like the ones I used to give poor people before I started working with them. They said they would (later, when they got home). When they finished, I guess they didn't see the disappointment I had on my face. Rather, they stared at me like I was a science project…
I wonder how many people I've given that look to…
God… HELP!
